Yet during the course of a long, cold, uncomfortable night, made even more miserable by a white mist that drenched everybody to the skin, Lawrence saw signs that kindled his optimism. The Arabs had failed again, certainly, just as they had outside Medina, but Feisal’s spirits were high, he was cheerful and patient with those who brought him complaints, and he seemed unsurprised, even amused, by what had happened. Feisal’s sense of humor (“that invariable magnet of Arab good will,” as Lawrence put it)as he chaffed those who had fled first or fastest, taught Lawrence how to handle the tribesmen: they responded poorly to criticism or reproof but enjoyed a good story even when it was at their own expense.

After a breakfast of dates, Feisal decided to move the army, partly to get it out of the mud and onto higher, drier ground; partly no doubt to take the men’s minds off their position, and off the danger they would be in if the Turks pursued them. The great drums were beaten; men mounted their camels and formed up in two wings, leaving a wide central alley, down which Feisal rode, followed by flag bearers, the intimates of his household, and the 800 men of his bodyguard. Lawrence rode close to Feisal, a privileged position, and was impressed by the savage splendor of the moment, and by Feisal’s instinctive majesty. Daylight—and his presence—had transformed a fleeing mob back into the semblance of an army. Feisal rode ahead and picked out a new encampment on high ground, near the village of Nakhl Mubarak, hidden among groves of date palms, less than forty miles from Yenbo. He raised his tents on a hill overlooking the camp, surrounded by his bodyguard, with the neat rows of the Egyptian gunners’ tents below him, and the Arab army spread out in its usual chaotic disorder beyond them.

It was here that Feisal asked Lawrence to wear Arab clothes, since these would be more acceptable to the tribesmen than his khaki uniform, which reminded them of a Turkish officer, and would also enable him “to slip in and out of his tent without making a sensation which he had to explain away each time to strangers.” To make sure that Lawrence would be recognized as a privileged member of the inner circle, Feisal presented him with the white and gold-threaded robes of a sharifian bridegroom, sent to Feisal by an aunt—perhaps as a hint, Lawrence wondered—that would become Lawrence’s trademark, both in the field and, much to the annoyance or amusement of other British officers, off it. Feisal also gave Lawrence his own British Short Lee-Enfield rifle, the standard.303-caliber weapon of the British army. This one had a very special history; marked as having been issued to the Essex Regiment, it had been captured at Gallipoli by the Turks. Enver Pasha, leader of the ruling Turkish triumvirate, had it polished, reblued, and inlayed with a boastful but beautiful flowing Arabic inscription in gold on the receiver: “Part of our booty in the battles for the Dardanelles.” He gave it to Sharif Hussein as a present, and also as a tactful reminder of Turkey’s victory over the British. Hussein had passed it on to Feisal at the beginning of the revolt. Lawrence would carry it all through the war; he carved his own initials on the stock, and initially cut a notch in the stock above the magazine for each Turk he killed, a practice he gave up in self-disgust when he reached number four.*

In the two days he spent with Feisal before returning to Yenbo to help organize its defense, Lawrence had an opportunity to judge the strength and the weaknesses of Feisal’s forces. He used the Egyptian gunners, who, unlike the Arab tribesmen, did not consider themselves above menial labor, to clear an emergency landing strip for the RFC aircraft, and sat in on all of Feisal’s meetings with the disputatious tribal leaders, noting how Feisal gently led them to do what in any other army would be normal practice, such as posting a guard at night in exposed positions, or sending out patrols. It was an army without rules and without noncommissioned officers, in which each man had to have his say (often at length), and in which an enormous amount of time and patience had to be spent—wasted, in the eyes of most British officers—to accomplish anything.

It was also an army in which religion was ever-present, from the moment the imam climbed to the top of a little hill overlooking the camp before dawn and called the faithful for prayers to the last call for prayer at dusk—even though most of the men did not seem to Lawrence particularly religious. Feisal, for example, was casually observant, but not, it appeared, from any deep belief or interest; he simply felt obliged as a leader to set a good example. He was a chain-smoker, although tobacco was forbidden to Muslims; he had a certain amused contempt for the narrow-minded puritanism of his father’s desert rival ibn Saud and his Wahhabi followers, and no enthusiasm at all for his father’s efforts toreintroduce sharia law to Mecca in place of the secular Turkish legal code, which was based on France’s Code Napolйon. Religion among the tribesmen was simply a given, something they all shared; few of them, in fact, had ever met anyone who was not a Muslim. Drawing from this experience, Lawrence would write the “Twenty-Seven Articles,” as a guide for British officers working with the Arabs, a work so full of common sense and tolerance that it is still relevant today. What is extraordinary is how well Lawrence fitted into Feisal’s entourage and camp life without any attempt at disguising who he was. He shared the routine, the food, the harsh living conditions, the obligatory long-drawn-out exchange of compliments so alien to a westerner, living among them without complaint or special treatment, and always careful to ensure that he was never seen “advising” Feisal or, worse yet, contradicting him.

For all of Feisal’s superhuman calm and patience, it was clear to Lawrence that his position at Nakhl Mubarak was hazardous and exposed. It became even more critical when Feisal learned that a Turkish column had surprised his half brother Zeid and Zeid’s 800 tribesmen while they were preparing their morning coffee. Zeid had of course not bothered to post any guards or send out any patrols while he and his force slept, and they were now in full retreat, having abandoned much of their baggage and equipment, including their coffeepots. From everywhere came reports that the Turks were concentrating rapidly on Feisal’s position. Lawrence sent a messenger off to Yenbo asking the RFC to make a reconnaissance flight and determine where the Turks were and in what strength, and asked that an urgent message be telegraphed to “Ginger” Boyle for naval support. He then rode to Yenbo himself on “a magnificent bay camel” with an escort provided by Feisal. There, he found that the indefatigable and inventive Garland had already been preparing defensive positions, on the optimistic assumption that the Arabs would man them.

Lawrence himself does not seem to have made any such assumption. He had already reached the conclusion that while “man by man” the Arabs were good, “as a mass they are not formidable, since they have no corporate spirit or discipline, or mutual confidence.” His report to Clayton recommended using them in the smallest possible units, and keeping them busy by making raids on Turkish outposts and the railway, rather than letting them “sit still"; sitting still made them “get nervous, and anxious to return home,” a trait that Feisal himself shared. In short, Lawrence had already made up his mind that the Arabs needed to fight an altogether different kind of war—guerrilla warfare was, he thought, the best way to use them effectively. He was familiar with Colonel C. E. Call-well’s classic Small Wars, the British army’s bible on fighting guerrillas, in which Callwell, who had fought in the Boer War, wrote: “Guerrilla warfare is what the regular armies always have to dread, and when this is directed by a leader with a genius for war, an effective campaign becomes well-nigh impossible.”